Rising Tide

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America by John M. Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well, well here we are again. Another hot summer has started and water is rising down South. At least this time we're not at the mercy of the Army Corps-oh wait. Hmmm. (Pack your paperwork, I beseech you my neighbors.)



Well it is true that the earthen levee system of the Mississippi is more substantial and a SYSTEM rather than the concrete pieces that were built on peat moss and sand along the canals of our Lake Pontchartrain and Industrial Canal here in New Orleans. We can be reasonably sure that the Corps will not kill thousands of people this month, mostly because this is a 100 year project and it is not dependent entirely on the current political system or money spent in post-capitalist America.



If you want to understand the breadth of this system I can most surely recommend this book to you. It's a page turner too, full of characters and politics and yes rising tides.

I'll tell you the best way for me to tell you how good the book is. I bought a second copy for my seafarin' stepfather who politely took all books on the Mississippi he was gifted and put them on his side table, never to be read. For this one, 2 weeks later I got a sideways, gruffly offered:

"hey that book? Not bad. not bad at all."



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